Sports Nutrition Saturday

I’m going to periodically chronicle my nutritional experiences as I go through ironman training. For a 10-17 hour event like Ironman, proper fueling is a critical component of your race day success. Improper fueling, whether too much/not enough/not right can override all of the physical and mental training that you’ve been through for the past six months to two years, so it’s important to figure out your nutrition through training. Please note that I am not a dietician or a coach, so what I am sharing is my own experience. Your experience may be different. For advice, please seek out a sports nutritionist or qualified coach.

So far in our shorter training blocks thus far, I’ve been using Nuun, and recently started using the Ironman Perform sports drink, since that’s out on the course. So far that’s been working well for me (which is a surprise given my challenges with finding good sports drinks over the years!)

Today, I had a two hour ride on the books, followed by a transition run. I wanted to see how the Ironman Perform would work with my mainstay from the 2013 season, Hammer Perpetuem. I decided I’d take a shot of the caffe latte Perpetuem paste every 40 minutes (starting 20 minutes into the ride), and drink the Perform throughout. Water as well.

Less than half an hour into the ride, I started feeling my stomach. Being full. I know I didn’t properly fuel the night before for this training ride, so I wasn’t sure if this was the bottle of wine talking back to me. It didn’t feel like that. I was definitely noticing it again after the first hour. Thankfully I didn’t have to go to the bathroom; it was all higher up in my stomach. Since this is early on in training, I decided to take the 1:40 paste shot but did not feel like I needed to eat. I worked on spacing out in between that shot and drinking perform again. By the time I got off the bike at two hours, I was feeling a bit better.

For the run afterward, I had a bit of water and no issues.

Analysis:

I think I had “delayed gastric emptying” going on after searching through Anatomy of a Gastroenterologist’s blog. Also, after looking at what I took in, against my coach’s recommendations for intake, I did not meet the mark in hardly any of the key areas (caloric consumption, carbs, sodium). Clearly I’ll need to plan a bit better for next time.